No doubt in response to the reception of last year's Tasheyana Compost, Infrasound has reissued USAISAMONSTER's previous two vinyl releases on a single disc. Anyone pleased with Compost'smuddy conglomerate of duo-blasted noise rock and prog-metal will feelequally at home in the arms of this beast, the lager-soaked pilgrim toits successor's war-weary Cherokee. The slick guitar chops are stillthere, each song still a many-armed mini-epic, but Citizenspreserves every piece of fudged riffage, every rhythmic stumble, andevery indulgent stomp-a-long bit, imbuing each with uncorruptedconviction, a metalhead's glee. It's not that these early releases showthe group in crude or undeveloped form (they are tighter than ever), oreven that their newer full-length represents a "softening" of theirsound; Citizens merely proves that these guys were thrashing tothe SST catalog long before they discovered Hawkwind. The disc offersthe more accurate and more thrilling picture of a band whose reputationhas rightfully developed around a blaring, overblown live event. Theguitars are a little less likely to dip into the angular jazz-istpatterns scattered throughout Compost, preferring close-croppedriffs and assaulting repetition, breakdowns occurring only when thetension and release of the figures buckles under the speed of eachsong. Songs themselves cater less to the wayward theatrics of thesucceeding album, and while some acoustic troubadouring does crop up,these songs (especially those from 2001's Citizens of the Universe)are more like spliced chains of 2-min. thrash anthems, worked togetherwith the occasional staggered metallic breather. I feel comfortablesaying that if Compost was not your air-drums record of the year, this surely will be. For all of its force, Citizens stays fun throughout and should be welcomed by new fans who were dismayed to find the original records unavailable. Read More
